Got up early-ish again today. 6:30 AM alarm. We got dressed and checked out of our “airport hotel”. Then we walked to the nearest train station and caught the train to the airport. (May I point out one last time that we had to take a train from our “airport hotel” to the fricken airport.) Once at the airport we find the rent-a-car place and get our car. So far, so good. Then we walk out to the car (which is almost in the spot they said it would be) and load our luggage. Next task is to program in our destination into the car...which is where the problems begin. Neither of us are able navigate the German menus and figure out how to either enter a destination or change the language to English. The car is a Ford C Max and it has Microsoft Sync interface with Sony controls. So basically, there is no chance this is going to be user friendly in any way. We walk back from the parking garage to the counter at the airport and ask if they can help up switch the car to English. The attendant disappears for a second and returns with a sheet of paper that explains both how to switch the language to English and enter destinations into the GPS. Pay dirt! Or so we thought. On the way back to the car Dawn take a closer look at our rosetta stone and realizes that this sheet says it’s for Ford cars but doesn’t exactly look like the messed up controls in our Ford. When we get back to the car we confirm that these are not the instructions for our particular car. I offer to make yet another trip between the garage and the airport counter to see if I can perhaps get the correct info sheet. When I get back I explain that this is exactly what we need, but for the wrong car and I show them a picture I took of the inside of our car. At that point the attendant picks up a phone and talks for a bit and then tells me I’ll meet one of her colleagues at the garage and he’ll sort it out.
I meet the young gentleman at the designated place and he follows me back to the car. During our walk he asks what kind of car we have. I tell him it’s a Ford C Max and he nods and says “You have to use the steering wheel to change the language on those. There’s no way to know that unless you already know that.” He’s right, no amount of browsing German menus on the GPS display was going to fix our problem. There is a secondary screen in front of the driver that first needs to be set. In a few seconds he configures the car for us and give us a quick how-to lesson on the GPS which is super helpful.
When we pull out onto the road I figure out the last piece of the GPS puzzle and get it out “demo” mode. We are now driving in Germany!
A couple of hours later we pull up at Dawn’s grandparents temporary residence in Germany. It’s an adorable little village. The river Main runs through their back yard. The fields surrounding the village are vineyard. Everything is lush and green.
After a brief visit we decided to head out to Bamberg to see the sights and Dawn’s grandfather accompanies us. Bamberg is about an hour’s drive away. We find some other lanes are under construction so there is a bit of detour business that the GPS helps us recover from.
Immediately Bamberg reminds me of Carcassonne La Cite in that it’s a well preserved cute little medieval town that would be more fun to visit without all of the tourists (like us). We luck out and find some almost too good to be true parking and set out on foot to explore Bamberg. The village is built on the river Regnitz and the village is literally built in the river so that it’s connected together with a series of bridges. (This place is so cute it’s a UNESCO world heritage site.) While there you constantly hear the burbling of water moving around the foundations of the buildings/island you’re currently standing on.
Apart from being an adorable medieval village Bamberg has another claim to fame that has drawn us here: rauchbier. Bamberg is also famous for a local style of very smoky tasting beer. A friend had brought me back a sample a couple of years ago and I quite liked it. This is the home of rauchbeir and we sit down at a cafe to sample the local wares. Mmm.. smoky beer.
After the cafe we continue our walking tour and Dawn’s tourist senses start to tingle and she leads us to a rather old looking building. Inside is a restaurant/brewery that has the honor of being the oldest brewery in town dating back to (look up date and name here). Ironically they do not make rauchbeir. I guess that was an innovation of some upstart brewery a couple of hundred of years ago. Still the beer is good and we enjoy sitting in a piece of history while catching up with her grandfather.
We walk back to the car and discover that we are the last car in our parking lot which was previous full. It turns out that our parking spot was in fact too good to be true. There is a 40 Euro ticket on the windshield. Wow, this was a very choice parking spot indeed!
We head back to Grettstadt and have dinner at a typical little German restaurant. The schnitzel is good.
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